Joan Didion has brought her ever-sharp quill to bear on the person of Dick Cheney, the steatopygous, coprophagous, ethically necrotic spawn of the demonic denizens of the putrescent depths of Hades. Had this man one whit of shame or decency he would have gone into hiding the day this article was published. And had the NYRB a readership equivalent to even a tenth the viewership of Fox News, this man would be forced to flee the country, with special prosecutors hot on his heels.
Very highly recommended. Here's a taste:
*****
If the case for war lacked a link between September 11 and Iraq, the Vice President would repeatedly cite the meeting that neither American nor Czech intelligence believed had taken place between Mohamed Atta and Iraqi intelligence in Prague: "It's been pretty well confirmed that [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attacks," he would say on NBC in December 2001. "We discovered...the allegation that one of the lead hijackers, Mohamed Atta, had, in fact, met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague," he would say on NBC in March 2002. "We have reporting that places [Atta] in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer a few months before the attacks on the World Trade Center," he would say on NBC in September 2002. "The senator has got his facts wrong," he would then say while debating Senator John Edwards during the 2004 campaign. "I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11."
This was not a slip of memory in the heat of debate. This was dishonest, a repeated misrepresentation, in the interests of claiming power, so bald and so systematic that the only instinctive response (Did too!) was that of the schoolyard.
This article was on my first subscription of the NYRB, and I was just blown away. I don't think no one could have pounded Cheney like Didion, it was just so refreshing to sum up all the snafus that cheney caused. Great read.